Category Archives: video

Night Music: Quicksilver Messenger Service, “Fresh Air”

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If you were alive in the late 60s and all of the 70s, you were fed industry folderol about new bands constantly. That was the old way.

There were no zines, no alternative press (unless its origins were political), and no internet. Obs.

But there was radio promotion, touring, and the rock press, which was just beginning to take the music and the artists seriously, if you can believe that. And making lots of money selling ads against its content. No grousing about that, just the observation that one of the reasons things blew up after the Beatles showed everyone how is that small industry became a big one for a while, and while doing so it got the feel of being something new.

I’m sure I learned of Quicksilver listening to this great song on the radio. They have some other good ones, and seem from this vantage to be one of the better more forgotten bands in our history.

Breakfast Blend: Dancing Barefoot

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When Patti Smith was awarded the Swedish Polar Music prize in 2011, her song Dancing Barefoot was sung by two up and coming sisters from the suburbs of Stockholm who go by the name First Aid Kit.

The incantatory power of that song gets me every time, but I wonder what Patti is thinking. Her visage is stern, but it’s hard to believe she is being hypercritical at that point. And by the end she too seems caught up in the power of her song and the loveliness of the harmonies and then the audaciousness of the poetic recitation (and maybe the length of her history, at this point).

The incantatory power of Dancing Barefoot bubbles up in this clip from Rockpalast TV in 1979, too. I’ve watched many Rockpalast TV clips and don’t recall being aware of the audience, particularly, but in this churning version of the song, which wouldn’t be out of place at a Quicksilver Messenger Service show, the audience suddenly breaks through and Patti has to handle the mess, and she does. It is very strange theater that comes with a terrific vocal performance and her very solid band. Plus, she blesses the pope!

Night Music: Taken By Trees, “Greyest Love of All”

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The album this cut is taken from is called East of Eden, which was released by the Secretly Canadian label, which was at that point (2009) also home to Antony and the Johnsons and Jens Lekman. So I’m not sure exactly how I found Taken By Trees, but the connection is almost certainly in some way Secretly Canadian.

Victoria Bergsman, who goes by the name Taken By Trees, moved to Pakistan for her second “solo” album, from Sweden, and recorded the album with Pakistani musicians. The result is a pretty appealing hybrid of her decidedly Swedish folk-punk internationalist backpacking roots style and the sensibilities of the local Pakistani musicians and their traditions.

It is not a rock record, I feel compelled to offer as a disclaimer, but it is only rock musicians who have prowled the world and created these unlikely hybrids, without coopting or marginalizing or archiving the local musicians. And man, does it sound nice.

Special props to the video.

LINK: The Most Boring TV Show In the World

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Abbey-Road-Album-Cover-rhcp abbey road

A story in the Independent has a story with an embed of a webcam pointed at the zebra crossing the Beatles and Red Hot Chili Peppers used as album covers. Seems that the spot is a tourist attraction and people stop traffic just to cross the street, and you can watch them!

There’s also a documentary about the crossing, which is fairly short and atmospheric and notes that the photo for the album cover was taken two weeks after Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon!

LINK: We Are The Best!

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I wrote about this fine movie, sort of, back in April, but just came across this NME Exclusive clip today.

I’m a big fan of all Lucas Moodyson’s films, so it isn’t surprising I like this one. What is surprising is the light comic touch the story has, maybe because it is based on a graphic novel written by his wife.

What is paramount in all of Moodyson’s films is that Swedes like Rock, and that music is perhaps more important than wheat for life. Here’s the clip. See the movie. And see Lilya 4 Ever and Show Me Love and Together if you can, all fantastic movies about young people with music, though not music movies.

Night Music: Randy Newman, “Burn On”

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I was dipping into some long form Delaney and Bonnie with Clapton, on the one hand, and with the Allman Brothers, on the other, when I landed in a Facebook clip from John Coleman. John is one of the greats of Tout Wars play, and a man who has sold cigars to many of the rock stars we love and many of those we hate, so his opinion matters here more than most.

John lives in Cleveland and responded to my goofy comment that I was waiting, in the clip (which I can’t show because it was posted on Facebook, as best I can tell) for Lake Erie to catch fire, with a clip from the German VHS version of the front title sequence from Major League, which is a tune by Randy Newman about the river, not the lake, catching fire.

My mistake.

Delaney and Bonnie are one of the reasons everything punk hated wasn’t really hateable. But that’s a story for a different day.

 

Breakfast Blend: The End of the World

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Skeeter Davis had a huge hit with this almost perfectly wrought pop song. She also has a rather startling look on this country music tv show.

More polish and muscle (and John Mellencamp) don’t disturb it.

Herman’s Hermits slow it down even more than Skeeter.

There are scores of versions of this song, but I couldn’t find a fast one. Mellencamp ups the pace more than anyone.